Tales Of The Beanworld

Or – “The Viewers Are Those Who Make The Painting…” I had a completely different Retro Review on tap for today, which (due to a series of circumstances filled with annoyance and vitriol probably best left undiscussed) will have to be postponed to a later date. I scanned my wall of comics looking for a suitable replacement, and my eyes immediately locked on the box marked “Howard The Duck/Tales Of The Beanworld/Zot!” and remembered something that my grandfather probably never actually said: “When life gives you lemons, sometimes you have to go read about beans…”

This week on the show: Beans that talk, Ducks what walk, and there’s something weird going on in a forest in Japan. Plus, Warcraft breaks a record… AGAIN! And did someone say magical fruit? [podcast]http://traffic.libsyn.com/majorspoilers/msp263.mp3[/podcast] Direct Download Subscribe via iTunes RSS Feed Podcast Alley Show Notes after the Jump!

Or – “Crisis On Infinite Oddities…” As we’ve mentioned previously, the comics publishing world has developed a “Big Event” mentality, and crossovers have become the norm for the big publishers. In the ’80s, in the wake of ‘Secret Wars’ and ‘Crisis On Infinite Earths,’ a number of publishers created their own universal opus to cash in on the crossover craze. One of the weirdest was Total Eclipse, from Eclipse Comics, publisher of titles as diverse as Miracleman, Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters, Tales of the Beanworld and more. The big question going into this book wasn’t what the threat was, it